


the ocean is not our territory

by hardlygolden



Category: UnREAL (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 22:38:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,069
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13040946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hardlygolden/pseuds/hardlygolden
Summary: It had started off as an idea the network had pitched -Everlastingbehind the scenes webisodes - run alongside the show, giving insights into the production. Quinn had fought it -we're not the story- but the network hadn't budged and Quinn had sighed and decided to pick her battles, instead using it as leverage to barter for a helicopter and an international getaway for the season finale.So here Rachel is, watching the tapes from today's interviews, B-roll of herself weaving through contestants, whispering into their ears, rearranging their hearts, pulling the strings. It's what she does - but she's not used to seeing it, not used to having it all laid out in the open and out in the light.





	the ocean is not our territory

**Author's Note:**

  * For [warriorpoet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/warriorpoet/gifts).



> "We provoke a shark every time we enter the water where sharks happen to be, for we forget: The ocean is not our territory - it's theirs." ~Peter Benchley

It had started off as an idea the network had pitched - _Everlasting_ behind the scenes webisodes - run alongside the show, giving insights into the production. Quinn had fought it -  _we're not the story -_ but the network hadn't budged and Quinn had sighed and decided to pick her battles, instead using it as leverage to barter for a helicopter and an international getaway for the season finale. 

So here Rachel is, watching the tapes from today's interviews, interspersed with B-roll of herself weaving through contestants, whispering into their ears, rearranging their hearts, pulling the strings. It's what she does - but she's not used to seeing it, not used to having it all laid out in the open and out in the light. 

Rachel watches her own face fill the screen, hears her own voice answer question after question after question. 

She's not used to the one being in front of the camera. 

She's not nearly drunk enough to watch this, and so she reaches for the second bottle of wine. 

"You did well," says Quinn, and Rachel wonders how long she's been standing there, how much of the interviews she heard. 

Quinn turns off the monitor, and all that's left are their reflections, staring back. Rachel looks at their twinned portraits, side by side. She knows she looks a wreck - hasn't slept in 28 hours, hasn't showered in three days. Quinn's sleek bob looks unruffled, for all that Rachel knows she's been awake almost as long. Maybe when she's Quinn's age, she'll stop feeling like such a mess. After all, being young is supposed to be something you grow out of. 

"I came to find you. Your phone was switched off," says Quinn. 

Rachel looks down at her phone. She vaguely remembers switching it off, sometime after the third missed call from Adam. Nothing about Adam has ever remotely resembled a good idea. 

If only it was so easy to switch off her mind, which is forever racing around, outpacing her thoughts, frenetically returning to the same worn grooves as if hoping to find different answers. 

“You used to be a shark,” says Quinn - and Rachel wonders how long she's been talking, whether this is the first thing she's said or just the first thing she's heard. 

“What am I now?” asks Rachel. She winces when she hears the slight waver in her voice - how earnest she sounds, how young. Quinn will hear it too, the same way she hears everything. 

Quinn shakes her head. “You’re still a shark. Right now? You just need to act like one. A shark can’t just decide to stop being a shark. You’ve got to keep swimming. Use your teeth. _Bite_.”

Rachel thinks - wildly - that maybe she should use this as inspiration to write a _Finding Nemo_ for millenials. Forget a clownfish and a parent that wouldn’t let go - sharks aren't always the villains, and anyway, anti-heroes are in vogue right now: moral high ground exchanged for a grey landscape where choices are never as simple as they seem.

Nothing is ever as simple as it seems - every step of Rachel's career proves that. She and Quinn have clawed themselves up in a man's world - and are remaking it, one episode at a time. 

"We're predators, not prey," says Quinn, flatly, but the corners of her mouth tug up into what on anyone else might be called a smile. Rachel has seen that same facial expression so many times before.  It's the look Quinn gets when she scents blood in the water and sees a clear path to turn chaos into ratings. 

Rachel has always seen things the same way- that's the worst part. Quinn's right. She can't change - she's tried. The way she can work a room and read the people within it - it's not a survival instinct, it's as natural as breathing. 

Rachel turns her head, burrows deeper into her jacket, lets the silence gather and settle around them. It's strange to be silent, like the calm before the storm. Through every minute of the day, there is always the undercurrent of conversations, rapid-fire instructions, the world happening around them reflected on twelve monitor screens, magnified and freeze-framed. 

How strange, to just sit here in the semi-darkness, with only the white-noise of the air-conditioning unit humming in the background. 

“What was your favourite thing to do, as a kid?” Rachel asks. It is almost definitely the wine talking, but as Rachel asks it she realises she is curious to know the answer. She's always been good at asking questions, trading secrets that people don't even know they're keeping, storing the answers away as ammunition to fuel future negotiations. 

Quinn looks at her blankly. “What did you just ask me?”

“As a kid. You know,” Rachel waves her hand, makes a vague gesture that is somehow intended to encompass the metaphysical concept of childhood as relates to Quinn.

Quinn rolls her eyes. “What do you want me to say? That I liked playing with puppets and pulling wings off flies? That I was always the banker in Monopoly? That I liked knocking down other kid's carefully-constructed sandcastles?"

Rachel blinks at her, slowly, and wonders what she expected. She wishes - not for the first time - that her brain could just switch off, that she could stop trying to learn everybody she meets, stitch herself up in their skin and see through their eyes. It would be easier, if she didn't understand them as well as she did. It's strange, to see so much and stay so detached.  _Predators, not prey._

“You don’t get to go all shrink-y on me,” Quinn says, and her voice is not gentler but perhaps it is softer, and when she stands she doesn’t walk away. Instead, she tosses a blanket in Rachel’s direction and points to the couch. 

“Sleep here tonight,” Quinn says. It’s an order, not an invitation. “The network can’t afford you getting done for another DUI.”

That barb should sting more than it does, however the pain of that year has long since dulled - covered over by new scars. Besides, the blanket feels improbably cozy. Her eyelids are very heavy.

Quinn pauses at the doorway. “Pony club,” she says, and then she’s walking out with a predatory sway, sleek and deadly, some part of her always poised to strike. 

Rachel falls asleep to the sound of the ocean, for all that it’s three hundred miles away.


End file.
